75% believe it would be a major disruption. 23% believe it would be a minor disruption.

Developers are highly concerned if the long-held understanding about the re-use of APIs is upended by a court order, a new survey conducted by the Developers Alliance shows. We completed a survey of over 200 US-based developers in late January and early February 2019. The results show that 83% of developer understand APIs to be free for reuse, and 97% of developers say there would be a disruption to the app industry if that were no longer the case.

Asked about specific concerns:

91% of developers are concerned (54% very) about higher costs coming from API licenses and restrictions;

90% of developers are concerned (44% very) about creating uncertainty and slowing development of new products;

86% of developers are concerned (46% very) about being locked-in to just a few programming languages due to costs and restrictions, and the impact this would have on interoperability.

As a result, 92% of developers say that these changes would be harmful to innovation in the app industry.

You can read more about this survey and our findings in our newly released report here.